Mixed Fortunes Ch.1

The first time I held Jessie Lombard’s hand my little six year old heart ran a few beats faster than normal. This would have been in January 1969, our first year of formal schooling. Our teachers always made the class one children line up in pairs whenever we had to go to a room other than our own home class, like the school hall or the library, or even to the playground. Boys lined up on the left and girls on the right, holding hands as we walked along. My hand holding partner happened to be Jessie. She was the prettiest girl in the entire school, with soft hazel eyes and beautiful dimples when she smiled.

She and I lived in the same 12 story building on the frontline of the city’s south end beachfront. My home was on the sixth floor and hers was on the ninth. We’d walk home from school together along the frontline, crossing two streets on the way to our building’s entrance, always putting into practice what the teachers had taught us about looking right, then left, then right again before we crossed over. This walk presented yet another chance for me to hold Jessie’s hand. I felt like a grown up doing that. I was her protector.

For seven years of primary school we were in the same class, but when it was time for us to go to high school we found ourselves parted by the old British single sex school traditions that had been imported to our part of South Africa.

High school was a miserable time for me. Not only did I lose touch with Jessie but I found myself at odds with a schooling system that was trying to forcefully rearrange the furniture in my mind. They forced me to play rugby and not my preferred sport of soccer that I had played since before I even went to school. They forced me to wear a blazer, long trousers and a tie in the stifling heat and humidity of the sub-tropical summer. I was always under threat of beatings or detention if I took either of them off before I got inside the sanctity of my own front door. High school sucked.

My resistance to this intrusion on my personality, while stoic, was slowly whipped out of me by the canes of various form masters during those five years spent in high school. It also didn’t help when my parents decided to move away from the beachfront in 1977 and into the very suburbs of this school’s existence, leaving me to contemplate what could have been between Jessie and I if we hadn’t moved.

When my five year endurance of high school ended I went off to an even deeper level of tribulation for two more years. The army. My conscription began in January 1981 and when I came back to civilian life at the start of 1983 I got a job in a bank. It was the easiest place for a guy who only had a high school education to find work. I didn’t like working in the bank very much either. Indian men who had been in junior management positions for decades did their best to remind me that my white boy skin carried no privilege with them. They were in charge. I had to listen to them in spite of the fact that I had obtained an officer’s rank in the army.

After a few years of working in the bank I was earning enough to be able to move out of my parent’s place and rent an affordable bachelor flat in a backline street down on the south end. My old stomping ground. Jessie still lived there and sometimes I’d see her around the local shops. Our eyes would meet and she would smile my way in that old familiar way, sending my twenty five year old heart into a fresh gallop. She was even more gorgeous at age twenty five than she’d been at age six. I was infatuated with her, but there was a problem: she had a serious boyfriend now and he was a real arsehole.

Micky McGee was a Scottish immigrant to South Africa. He was a short guy but he came across as appealing to the local girls because of his brogue, flashy clothes and being the bass player in a two piece cover band idiotically named 4some. They played most weekends at a local pub called Harlequins. Jessie had been going out with him for about a year when I moved back to the south end in late 1987. When I found out about their relationship I was downhearted but what could I do? It seemed that my chance at winning the right to hold her hand again went sailing on a small Scottish skiff.

4some only played covers of popular songs and Micky fashioned himself after Mark King from Level 42, strapping the instrument guitar high on his midriff and slapping the strings much the same way his musical idol did. A weird thing about Micky’s world though, wasn’t that he behaved like an arsehole most of the time and had somehow captured the heart of a girl I had been smitten with for most of my life, it was that he lived with his younger brother Andrew who spoke with a cockney accent, not a Scottish one. They looked completely different too. Andrew was tall at six foot three, fair haired and had a tanned, surfer’s complexion whereas Mickey looked like he’d never seen the sun and apparently stopped growing around age fourteen.

Sometimes I’d hang out out with Andrew and the other surfers down at the grassy patch on the beachfront. He was alright, a friendly guy, unlike his older brother. None of our gang could figure out (or dared to ask) how they could even be related seeing as they looked so different and clearly had different accents.

The universe has a strange way of lining things up though and it was on a stickily humid Friday night in early April of 1988 that I got my chance to reconnect with Jessie. My best army buddy Simon Bryant and I were down at the Harlequins pub, flattening our second jug of draught beer at a table right in front of the stage, watching Micky and his band mate Pete do their thing. Jessie was there, sitting at the end of the bar closest to the stage. I waved at her and she came right over to our table. This was unusual.

“Hey, how’s it going, Jessie?” I asked as she sat down with her back to Micky.  She smiled half-heartedly but said nothing. She seemed off, downcast.

“Can we get you a glass? Share our jug?” asked Simon. Jessie shook her head slightly.

“What I would really like is a brandy & coke.” she said.

Simon and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised. If a girl wanted a hard liquor it usually meant trouble was not far away. Brandy was the kind of drink that made people aggressive, especially women. I didn’t pitch Jessie as being the kind of girl who was into the hard stuff, but clearly I had been away from the south end for too long. Simon motioned for a waitress to come over to the table.

A medium build, blonde girl with impossibly glossy red lips sauntered over to us, a small black tray tucked under her arm. She must have been new to Harlequins because we’d never seen her before and we practically lived in the place. Leaning back in the chair with her legs crossed and arms folded, Jessie glared upwards in her direction while Simon ordered the brandy. The glossy lipped waitress nodded and walked back to the bar. As the song ended I caught Micky watching her walk away, a stupid grin on his face.

“Thank ye’s very much.” he said into the microphone, acknowledging the thin applause the band was getting from the pub patrons. It was still early but before too long the place would be packed to capacity. “We got some great numbers for ye’s t’night and this next one is fer the lovely waitress Sally over there. Don’t f’rget to gi’ her a great big tip!”

Then he launched into Level 42’s Lessons In Love, slapping his bass urgently.

A few moments later Sally came back with the brandy & coke and put it down on the table under a paper coaster in front of Simon, not Jessie. Simon dropped a small bank note onto her tray and told her to keep the change. Jessie’s expression was as cold as ice, her eyes not breaking contact with Sally. She was still glaring at Sally as Simon slid the drink in front of her. Sally smirked and then smiled at Micky on the stage. Micky was looking right at Sally, singing as if only for her. I felt a dark moment pass between the two girls. Jessie held her glare, those intense hazel eyes of hers much larger than usual.

After the song finished she got up from the table saying she was going to the ladies. Simon and I got engrossed in a conversation about the music industry benefits of writing your own songs as opposed to covering others. We thought we were proper music buffs.

“Micky’s got a good voice, I don’t know why he hasn’t tried writing his own stuff.” I said.

“Probably doesn’t have the chops.” Simon replied, smiling his kooky little smile that let you know he was about to say something funny after a short pause. “Because he is already a full time chop.”

I snickered. “Yes, we don’t even know if he can write. Do ye’s think they have pens in Scotland?”

We both laughed and the short Scot began playing yet another Level 42 number on the back of the first one.

“Fucking hell, man. Doesn’t he know anything else?” Simon said, shaking his head. We endured yet another Level 42 cover. When that song ended I realised that Jessie hadn’t come back from the loo yet.

“I wonder where that Jessie went?” I said.

“Fuck knows. Doing girl shit, getting into trouble, I suppose.” said Simon.

A thought crossed my mind that maybe Jessie was sensing a vibe between Micky and Sally because he was definitely the kind of guy who would love a side order with the main meal. I knew the type all too well. Everybody on the south end knew what Micky was like when it came to women. Everyone except for Jessie.

Just then she came back. She had indeed found trouble. Her hair was all messed up, her T-shirt was torn at the shoulder and there was a nasty red scratch right across her left cheek. Her eyes were gleaming like torches and her hands were trembling. It was clear that she’d been crying. Feint bits of spoiled mascara were scattered around her eyes.

“I’m out of here.” she said.

“Jesus, what happened?” Simon asked, his mouth ajar.

“That happened.” she said, turning and pointing directly at Micky, who was lost in another song, his eyes closed as he now emulated Bono playing With Or Without You. Jessie picked up her brandy & coke, took a giant gulp and turned towards Micky.

“Hey dickhead!” she screamed and then launched the glass with its remnants straight at his head. She was only a couple of metres away from him.

Micky opened his eyes just in time to see the glass hurtling his way. He didn’t duck fast enough and it smashed into the top of his skull, showering him in bits of glass, ice, Coke and brandy. He staggered backwards, his amp emitted a loud squeal of feedback as his bass connected with the mic stand, toppling it over. A small river of blood began flowing from his forehead down his nose. It dripped onto his white T-shirt before disappearing into the body of his ruby red bass guitar. He looked stunned. Pete looked on astonished from the other side of the stage. He’d stopped playing but the backing track carried on without him.

“What the fuck?” Simon and I both said at once.

Just then a big fat guy who had been standing security close to the door of the pub ran across to our table and in a matter of seconds had Jessie in a chokehold. He began dragging her backwards towards the door, her one free arm flailing wildly, trying to free herself from his grip. The two of them careered into another table, sending drinks and the patrons sitting there flying. The next thing the entire pub was on its feet. Simon and I followed Jessie and her captor, dodging the table of annoyed people they had disrupted.

We got to them just as he was manhandling her out onto the pavement. He seemed to be taking some perverse delight in ejecting her from the pub, his fat moustachioed face grinning as he bundled her through the door. Must have been an ex-policeman, I thought.

“Hey! Don’t hurt her.” I shouted. He ignored me and shoved Jessie headlong into a parked car. She crumpled onto the ground, snot bubbling out of her nose. It looked like fatty was going in closer, probably to kick her while she lay there trying to gather herself. Just then Simon grabbed Fatty’s shoulder from behind and unleashed a vicious right hand slap perfectly across his face. This stopped him dead in his tracks. He turned towards Simon, snarling. That’s when I slapped him from the other side. Now he had two of us to deal with.

Out the corner of my eye, I saw Jessie getting up off the pavement, her face contorted with rage, teeth bared, eyes like fireballs. She looked nothing like the sweet girl I had known since childhood.

“You fucking animal!” she bellowed. Fatty turned around towards her, uncertain of where his next hit was going to come from. Jessie wound up her right leg and kicked him plum in the balls, her tennis shoe almost disappearing from sight into his fat groin as she did it.

Fatty made a “poof” sound like a large punctured paper bag as he fell to the ground, clutching his injured manhood. Jessie wasn’t done with him yet. She lined up another kick, this time to his exposed flank. His black golf shirt had ridden up from his giant black pants. He wheezed and with panicked eyes pleaded with her not to kick him again. Jessie didn’t care and landed another thumping right foot in the exact same spot. I could see that it was going to leave one hell of a bruise. The big guy didn’t know what to do. She would have carried on kicking him if I hadn’t pulled her away. By now more people were coming out of the pub to see what all the commotion was.

“I think we better get out of here,” I said, sensing that bouncer reinforcements would be on their way soon.

“My bag is still inside.” Jessie said. She had stopped fighting and just stood there limply looking down at her oversized assailant who was trying to get to his feet but not succeeding.

“I’ll get it.” Simon said, making a point to step over the struggling Fatty, pushing him back down to the ground with his size 11 Doc Martins boot planted on the fallen bouncer’s chest. Simon was a pretty tall guy at six foot four.

“Not such a good idea to hurt a girl, is it?” he said as he loomed over him. Then he pushed his way back inside Harlequin’s through the crowd that had formed at the door. A few moments later he came out holding Jessie’s black handbag like it was stolen loot. No reinforcements were coming but Fatty was now getting assistance from a few of the onlookers, some of them glaring at us like we were hoodlums from the South end. I guess we were.

We walked away from Harlequins and had gone about three hundred meters when Jessie’s emotional defences broke away completely. She stopped, leaned against a building we were passing and began howling great big sobs. These days they call it ‘ugly crying’. It was horrible to see her this way.

I put an arm around her shoulders hoping to get her to calm down. “Hey Jessie, it’s okay, you’re safe with us now.” After a few minutes she caught hold of herself again. We were outside a busy games arcade, still about half a click from home. Above the arcade was a bar named the Lonsdale, its inviting neon sign tempting passers by up a set of plush carpeted stairs.

“Good Lord, I need another drink!” Simon exclaimed. “You guys want to go up to the Lonsdale and have a nightcap or three? Calm the nerves a bit?” Jessie shook her head. She was calmer now but not in any state to carry on drinking.

“I just wanna go home.” she sniffled.

“I’ll walk you home if you want.” I offered. She looked up at me through teary eyes and nodded sadly, saying nothing else. Right then I caught a glimmer of the young, innocent girl I’d known so many years ago. She carried trust for me in those eyes.

“OK, let’s go.” I said. “I’ll see you later, Simon.”

“Take it easy guys.” he said as he went up the stairs to the Lonsdale.

We chose to walk down the frontline street along the beach instead of the shorter backline route behind the ocean facing buildings. It was soothing to hear the waves crashing onto the shore at night, even though you couldn’t see them fully in the darkness. The streetlights were only just strong enough to pick up the white foam as it lapped onto the sand. I guessed it was somewhere between low and high tide. As we walked south I got out of her that she had found out that Micky was seeing that new waitress, Sally, behind her back. Jessie had gone to the back of Harlequins to confront her but Sally got aggressive and had roughed her up, resulting in the torn T-shirt and now glowing scratch mark on her cheek.

“Micky is an arsehole, everybody knows it.” I said, not really wanting to hide my disgust at the little foreigner who had been making her life miserable for at least a year.

“So it seems. Why does everybody know this except me?” she asked.

“Because you think the best of people.” I suggested. She smiled a little at that.

We sat down on a bench just across the parking lot in front of her building. There was a short stone wall in front of us and we rested our feet on it. I fished out my smokes from my pocket and offered her one. She accepted and we lit up, blowing the calming smoke into the balmy night air, enjoying the silence for a few minutes. Eventually I broke it.

“Do you remember when we used to walk home from school this way?” I asked.

“I do.” she said with a half smile forming on her tear streaked face. She may have looked less than her best but I still didn’t see anything other than the beauty that had captured my heart from the moment I met her. “The good old days. You would always want to walk on top of this wall and tease me for not joining you.”

“Still afraid of heights?” I asked.

“Just a little.” she replied. I chuckled and mock punched her on her shoulder.

“That’s the girl I remember, not the crazy chick who was kicking the shit out of that fat bastard down the road. Where’d you learn those Kung Fu moves anyhow?”

She sighed, the fresh memory of tonight’s fracas forcing her eyes downwards.

“I’m not really like that.” she said. “I don’t know what got into me.” The tears came back and I felt like shit for calling her crazy.

“Hey, I’m sorry, Jessie. I don’t think you’re crazy. If we hadn’t stopped him that guy was going to probably kick you while you were down. I was only joking. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, no need to apologise.” she said softly.

We finished our cigarettes and walked across the parking lot to the entrance of her building.

“You want me to come upstairs with you?” I asked. She nodded.

Inside the lift she examined her cheek in the mirror. The scratch might not scar but it would probably linger for a few days.

“God, I look a fright.” she said. “My Dad’s probably going to freak out when he sees me, so please just say it wasn’t Micky if he asks you, OK?”

“I won’t say anything. Promise.”

She opened the door to the flat and I could see the back of her father’s head from behind the lounge chair he had passed out on. All around his chair were years of cigarette burns in the wall-to-wall carpet. How he hadn’t burned down the entire building was anybody’s guess. Jessie went over to the chair, looking curiously into his face to make sure he was still breathing. A dead cigarette was still wedged between his thick, yellowed fingers. She plucked it out and dropped it into an empty beer bottle and turned off the TV before coming back to me at the front door.

“My Mom’s gone, so it’s just me and Daddy living here now.” she said.

“Gone? As in… she left?”

“Yup. Gone like the wind. It’s been eighteen months. She just up and left us one day. I don’t think she’s ever coming back.”

“Shit. I’m really sorry to her that, Jessie.”

A young woman her age should have been a lot happier in life, but the truth is that down on the south end happiness either hung out in the surf or in the bottle. Sometimes both. It was the only way to ease the pain of knowing you might never escape this shitty blue collar neighbourhood. Even though we were located in what should have been a paradise, any first time visitor to the south end could tell that this was the crap side of the city’s otherwise impressive beachfront.

“Come with me.” she said taking my hand. We walked down a narrow passage. Her bedroom door was on the left. Inside she turned on the overhead light revealing a sparsely decorated girl’s bedroom. Pink cover on a single bed that was against the far wall, teddy bears bunched up in the corner, magazine cuttings of pop music and TV stars stuck on the wall with Prestik, and a pine bedside table with a wonky bedside lamp shade. I’d never been inside her flat before, even though we had lived in the same building for years as children. The Lombard’s obviously didn’t live an extravagant life on the ninth floor.

She sat down on her bed and invited me to sit next to her.

“I have a secret to share about Micky,” she said. “I’ll tell you, but you have to swear not to breathe a word of it to anybody else. Do you promise?”

“Oh man, is this heavy?” I asked, taking up the space next to her.

“Pretty heavy. Do you promise not to tell?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this secret she was about to reveal. Part of me felt that she was hoping to get back at Micky and using me to do that. Another part thought that maybe our childhood friendship meant she felt she could trust me.

“Ok. What’s going on?” I asked.

“Micky and Andrew aren’t real brothers.”

Well, duh. I felt a kind of relief, because it was generally already a foregone conclusion amongst the south end crowd that they weren’t biologically related.

“Their Dad is in prison in the UK, but he’s not their real Dad. He adopted them when they were young and sent them out here when he got locked up.”

“Holy shit. Prison? Really?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I’m not 100% sure but I think he was a bank robber over there.”

Talk about bombshells. My mind was racing. And Jessie had gotten mixed up with this bank robber’s son?

“So what are Andrew and Micky doing here?” I asked.

“Living on stolen money, I guess. They don’t seem to work much, but there’s always money for stuff none of us can afford.”

“Such as?”

“New surfboards, guitars, gigging equipment, hi-fis, you name it, they have it.”

“You’d think they would choose a better place to live in if they were loaded, hey?” I said, thinking of the crappy building they stayed in behind the back line street.

“Camouflage. If they were going to swank it out I think it would draw too much attention, especially if they are spending their father’s ill gotten gains.”

She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. There was more to come.

“That’s not the worst part,” she said, her tears beginning to well up again as she looked at me. “I think I might be pregnant.”

My heart sank.

“Oh no, Jessie. How late are you?” I asked.

“About a week or so. I’m normally as regular as clockwork.”

Jessie had her hands clasped together in her lap. I wasn’t sure why she was telling me this.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She dropped her head into her hands. I could see that this was a terrible weight she was bearing, especially considering what had happened earlier that night with her finding out about Micky and Sally.

I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. She didn’t resist and we sat there together for a while. I could hear sniffles even though in that position I couldn’t see her face I knew that she had started crying again. I rubbed her back with one hand and placed my other hand on top of hers . She held onto it. In spite of the heat of the late summer night her hands were cold.

“Oh God, I hope I didn’t hurt Micky too badly with that glass.” she said.

“I think he’s the one who’s done all the hurting, I wouldn’t worry about him at all if I was you. Maybe Harlequins has some bar polish to treat his thick head wound?”

This brought a reaction from her. A good one. She let out a snort of a laugh and sat up slightly, bringing her face level with mine.

“You’re funny, Danny Peterson.” she said, that dimpled smile I knew from our childhood trying hard to push through. She was quiet for a minute and then said “Will you help me figure out what to do with this mess?”

I don’t know what she expected me to do but I said sure, I’d be happy to help her. We sat together for a while, not saying anything else. Then she yawned, tiredly and said she was going to bath and go to bed. She walked me to the door of the flat.

“Will you be down at the beach tomorrow?” she asked. I nodded.

“I’ll be here for you if you need me.” I said, standing in the threshold of the flat, half expecting a kiss goodnight.

“Good night, Danny. Thanks for helping me. You’re a real gentleman.” I got a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

It was 10pm and I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet, so I walked back to the Lonsdale to see if I could find Simon. He was still there, sitting at the bar next to another older guy, surveying the sedate surroundings. When he saw me his eyes lit up and he gestured to the barman to get me a beer.

“So how is she?” he asked.

“Man, this is one giant fuckup of a situation for her.” I said.

I wouldn’t tell him exactly what Jessie had confided in me, but he had to know that she would be okay so I told him the part about Micky and Sally having a thing, leaving out the bank robber Daddy and possible pregnancy bits that Jessie had confided in me.

Simon raised one eyebrow.

“Well here’s to Micky and his new Minnie.” he said.

We clinked our beer bottles together.

“Apparently Micky went to casualty and got six stitches in his pip. Benny here says that he saw him coming out of the hospital with a bandage wrapped around his head.” he pointed at his new mate Benny, a barfly who did a tour of all the local drinking holes every Friday night. Benny raised his glass to us.

“Good job, Jessie.” I said.

We chuckled and clinked our bottles together again.